The purpose of this study was to validate an automatic method for tracking tennis players. The method is based on algorithms for camera calibration, image pre-processing, segmentation, filtering, tracking and computer vision tools. Two digital video cameras (30 Hz) were used to register player movement on a tennis court. The validation of the 2D-reconstructed points was based on the following analysis: intra-operator repeatability (.009 m), inter-operator repeatability (.007 m), relative error (.24% for length and .52% width coordinates) and ICC (.88 consistency and .89 absolute agreement, p < .05). The mean bias and precision were .33 and .15 m, respectively, resulting in an accuracy of .36 m. There were significant linear regressions (p < .05) between positions obtained by the automatic and manual tracking procedures (R2 = .9903 for x-coordinate, R2 = .9952 y-coordinate). The RMS error comparing both methods was .51 m. The percentage of automatic tracking (when the system identified player`s position correctly, without operator intervention) during a simulated match reached 99.98% of the 22,000 frames processed. The distances covered by the two players during a set were 1229.6 and 1083.1 m. In conclusion, the method proposed revealed to be simple, valid and consistent to track tennis players on the court. Keywords: Kinematics, match analysis, image processing
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